If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.

The principle objectives in life are love, the creation and enjoyment if aesthetic experience, the pursuit of knowledge. Love comes a long way first.

It is Enterprise which build and improves the world's possessions...If Enterprise is afoot, Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, Wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.

Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits-a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.

Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught

I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.

This siren, this goat-footed bard, this half human visitor to our age the hag-ridden and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity. One catches in his company that flavour of final purposelessness, inner responsibility, existence outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning, remorselessness, love of power.